Need some Help please

What is the name of your state? Ohio

My husband and i just recently moved out of his ex-best friends house where we lived for 2 months. We lived there because his friend asked us to move in and help them pay their mortgage becasue they were behind. My husband agreed and said that we would move in. we moved in and everything was going god until the end of August.....The basement that we lived in flooded. we had to move all of our stuff back into his garage where it had been for a while. my husband and i had to sleep in their living room for a whole moth on our mattress. we had no privacy or anything. We did not have a contract with his friend at all and we paid him for the month of august but did not pay him for September because we did not have a room to sleep in. So my husband and my son and i moved out back into our own apartment and just left with out paying. now 2 weeks later he is saying that he wants to take us to court for his money that we owe. Technically i didn't think we did owe him anything becasue there was no contract. but he is saying that because on one of the checks that i gave him in the memo part at the bottom said August Rent that, that was enough for an attorney to call it a lease. i am all confused here though. if we were under a "Lease" supposibly then wouldn't we be able to counte sue him for not keeping his end of the bargain as a landlord. he never fixed the basement for us to move back into, their cats peed and pooped all over our stuff, they called my son names wheni was in the same room and i have a witness to that and the hous was inhumane because they had Fleas everywhere which we had to live with and they gave them to my cat.

Can he sue us for money even though there was never any lease/contract?

Sincerely,
Texmexprincess

I'd tell them ,if they feel they must file to go ahead,but you counter sue , for your damaged property , and non use of your agreement for living space.

Was the agreement that you would have the basement for living quarters ?

Tell them you are not paying their bills ..

"Can he sue us for money"
*** Yes. Anyone can sue almost anyone else over almost anything. So, yes, they can file a lawsuit against you.

"even though there was never any lease/contract?"
*** There was a lease. It just happened to be a verbal one. And since you (apparently) wrote 'August Rent' on your check, they can use that to show that the verbal lease was month-to-month.

In any event, the question of sue or not is really out of your hands. I would simply ignore any further contacts with them and see IF they do proceed with a lawsuit. If they do, then you can try to negotiate a settlement at that time. If you aren't successful in your negotiations, then simply go to court and give your version of the facts and hope that the court gives you some leeway in the amount owed.

yes the agreement was that we had the basement as our room and an extra room upstairs for our son. although he said that he is proceeding with the lawsuit and my husband said that he would be there in court because if there was a lease then he as a "landlord" did not keep up his end of the bargain which would be giving us the basement as our room. he did not care that we were sleeping in his living room for a whole month.

Sincerely,
Texmexprincess

One thing that might be VERY important in this is to find out if the person had an 'Occupancy Permit' for the basement allowing him to rent it out. I am willing to bet that he didn't, and without that, he can't rent it... and thereby no lease.

Contact the local permit office and see if they have any record of this permit or if he was allowed to rent it.

Further, your post says this person was paying a mortgage, but does this person own this house or is he a renter?? If he rents, it is possible that his lease would prohibit his sub-leasing to you.... and that would negate his claims of your having a lease.

Can He Sue

Hello,
Yes he can sue you and has a great chance to win. You and your family were living with him under his roof. You paid him "rent" one time, and no matter if you stayed in the basement, or kitchen you had a place to live. Life is full of choices, and you made a choice to stay in the living room. Accidents happen, like with his basement, and that is stuff you can't perdict. I am sure that was not a plan of his. I am unsure if you wrote if there was any damage to your property, but if you did have water damage to your property, then his insurance would fix or replace anything damaged. I am sorry I feel you do not have a strong enough arguement for not paying his since you did not have a private room. I live right next door to you (Indiana) and our laws are pretty much near the same. Good luck to you.

The person that we were living with owns the house. he asked us to live in his basement until they caught up on their mortgage. and as far as i am concerned he was supposed to be our landlord and the agreement was that we would have the basement as our room......my husband and i were very understanding as to what happened with the basement and understood that it was not his fault.....however when he received the check from his insurance company he had the check from September 13th until the day we moved out and still did not install carpet for us to move back downstairs into the basement. besides the insurance company gave him a good amount of money to clean the basement and to rid it of Black mold that they had noticed and he did not even do that. my husband got really sick the following day after cleaning the basement himself....he got rid of thenasy carpet that was just sitting down there wet and soggy int he middle of the floor....as a favor might i add and our supposedly "Lanlord" didn't even do anything to the basement we did it all.
I understand that none of this was his fault and we do not blame him for any of it because like everyone said it was an accident that could have never been predicted but there are other things behind the matter as well. I feel as if we were the ones being wrong here but now that it hink of it we did nothing wrong but try an take our son out of that horrible inhabitable environment so that he would not get sick from the black mold which is why he has not received payment for what we owe. He did not have a permit to let us live i the basement either and when the adjustor came for the insurance company to note the damages he told us that we needed to get our stuff out of the basement because if they knew that we were living downstairs then they would not give him the money for the damages because it was not his stuff. and some of our things did get damaged that i will also bring up in court and i have pictures of them aswell.

i would like to take this oppertunity to thank everyone who has emlightened me with there information......it has been very helpful in many ways.

Thanks alot,